The explosive power of the US bolide was 1,000 times lower than Chelyabinsk’s, says Victor Grokhovsky

13:14, January 23, 2018

UrFU scientists will discuss their American colleagues’ research during the upcoming Meteoritical Society Meeting

According to UrFU Professor Victor Grokhovsky, the bolide that flew over Detroit (Michigan, USA) had the explosive power lower than that of the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013.

“Yes, it was a bolide. It’s too early to call it a meteorite: our American colleagues haven’t found the matter yet. In the video, you can see that this bolide is incomparable with the Chelyabinsk one, being around 1,000 times lower in power. For comparison, the power of a similar bolide’s explosion that occurred on January, 7 near Naberezhnye Chelny was estimated to be 5,000 times lower than what we had almost 5 years ago in Chelyabinsk. What happened in Detroit is rather common for us, it happens quite often here in Russia, so we’re not planning on joining [our colleagues] for now”.

Prof. Grokhovsky pointed out that American scientists will be able to use infrasonic registration system to estimate the power. The number of meteorite experts in the USA exceeds that in Russia, so there should not be any need for extra help.

“We hope that our colleagues will find the meteorite and we’ll be able to talk to them during the Meteoritical Society Meeting in Moscow, where Ural Federal University is one of the organizers. By the way, our Detroit colleagues plan on visiting both Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk to look at our findings”, adds Prof. Grokhovsky.

On July 22-27, 2018, Moscow will host the 81^st Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting.

Reference

The US National Weather Service reported a small-sized meteorite falling near Detroit through their official Twitter account last Wednesday. According to TASS, the information was confirmed by the US Geological Survey, who added that the body fell down 8 kilometers from New Haven (east of Detroit) and caused a 2.0-magnitude earthquake.